Usher Hall, Edinburgh
Four stars
For those who actually
saw Joy Division, the Mancunian post-punk quartet who were still on
the margins at the time of lead singer Ian Curtis' suicide in 1980,
which put an abrupt end to the band's brief four year existence, the
industry that has grown up around them and their record label Factory
has been bewildering to watch. Books, films, cover versions and
increasingly ludicrous merchandise abound, while Joy Division bassist
Peter Hook and his band The Light have performed both the band's
albums in full. This epic electro-orchestral deconstruction of Joy
Division's austere and urgent canon, however, might well have been
something the band's late producer Martin Hannett dreamt up.
Electronic auteur
Scanner, the thirty-strong Heritage Orchestra plus drummer Adam Betts
and guitarist Matt Calvert from post-rock instrumentalists Three
Trapped Tigers and Ghostpoet bassist John Calvert perform an
eighty-minute suite that takes Joy Division songs as their starting
point before stripping them down, bending them out of shape and
rebuilding them so they're barely recognisable. What's left of
Transmission sounds like Ennio Morricone gone Techno, Digital is
woozy and funereal, while Isolation becomes cosmic prog as Matt
Watkins' video cut-ups capture the music's full Ballardian
psycho-geographic sweep.
On one level,
technology has made this an easy trick. There are tons of ripped-up,
slowed-down versions of classic songs floating around the internet.
On another, this is both a magnificent homage to one of one of the
most important bands ever and a wonderful sleight of hand that can
get a couple of thousand ageing ex-punks into a sit-down contemporary
classical concert to witness industrial abstractions of northern
England that sound as vital as they ever did.
The Herald, October 3rd 2013
ends
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